by JM Guillen
Some were normal; others concealed weapons.
Bishop, Michael. Asset #108. The voice in my Crown was decidedly neutral. Welcome, Asset.
I glanced around, frowning. My choices were understandably limited as no one wanted me charging around an airport in full Facility gear. Still, my options were sparse.
Perhaps I was just spoiled. Usually my options were practically unlimited.
The white room connected to my apartment was always fully spec’d. A drawer held cash, credit cards, and various bits of ID: passports, drivers’ licenses, national ID cards. If I needed something special for a mission, the computer and ultra-high quality printer allowed me to download and print pretty much any piece of government paperwork possible. I didn’t have to load paper, it printed that too. Pretty fancy. They might be on the market in fifteen years or so.
But here…
My choices were short to put it kindly: no guns at all, neither general class nor Facility specialized. No blades of any kind either, not even the smallest knife. No body armor.
I found passive weapons, axiomatic tools, and injectables, a plethora of them lay out on the steel table. Frowning, I turned and opened one of the cabinets. Dampening grenades! I smiled.
Designate, I need guidance.
Her voice was December in my mind. This aberration is not our primary objective at this time, Michael. Use the dampeners to restore ambient Rationality. Take the creature if you can, but if the dampeners eject the creature to the astral tides, you are to let it go. No extraction team is prepared. In 88% of all simulations, ejection is the preferred outcome in this situation. This is a random event, and you are not to jeopardize your primary mission to resolve it.
I bit my lip. I hated leaving the creature loose. Understood, Designate.
Then she was gone, like a whisper on the wind.
Looking around, I weighed my limited options. I grabbed four of the dampener grenades, knowing that for their size, they contained quite a punch. They weren’t explosives; instead they reasserted the axioms and laws of Rational physics, creating a burst of stability within a certain sphere.
Quite handy indeed.
I looked over a Neural Lacuna, a device designed to stun the memory of a human target, causing them a type of amnesia, and a set of axiomatic shackles. I almost took a photic baton, figuring that it would be simple to conceal, but then realized that engaging the aberration was not my goal.
Then I saw a smooth, small disk, no larger than my fist. There were several dials along the surface, and I was certain it was already queued to me.
The Tabula Rasa.
That was a surprising inclusion. The Tabula Rasa was used to completely obliterate all matter within a certain radius, leaving a spherical void in its place. In an instant, there would be a sphere of nothingness, and then thunder as the air around the sphere slammed back into place.
A bit of overkill for one aberration, I thought. It could come in handy, but…
Reluctantly, I left it behind to inspect the injectable cooler.
Three minutes, twelve seconds, Michael.
Injectables were small, pressurized syringes of nano machines, a specialized type that were classified as viral mecha. They were designed to interface with the Solomon’s Crown, giving short-lived boosts to the human body. Oftentimes, these boosts were far more than were possible using simple chemistry, hence the viral mecha were geared to create small axiomatic changes within the human body.
I took seven of them, checking the encoding to make certain I had what I needed.
I poked around some more until my gaze settled on the Tabula Rasa again. I grabbed it, just in case.
There really was nothing else.
I had never been in a white room that was so spartan. I used one of the small, white injectables, making certain I noted the code on the side. There were dozens of different kinds, but this one was pretty typical. It augmented speed and grace, allowing shorts bursts of each, all at the cost of a little muscle soreness.
Useful in a pinch.
I thrust it against my bare arm. There was a tiny hissing noise as thousands of dormant viral mecha flowed into my bloodstream.
Two minutes, Michael.
Understood, Anya. Thank you. I walked toward the door. There’s little to be had here.
Acknowledged. I will be standing by if you require me.
Do we have a visual overlay of the aberration’s location? Already, I felt the effects of the mecha as thousands of the tiny devices stimulated my neurons and endocrine system. Everything felt faster; my head was clearer.
Patching you the intel. I felt a subtle shifting in my Crown.
Thank you, Anya. I stepped through the door, back into the busy airport.
The intricately designed Crown contained thousands of connections to each hemisphere of the human brain. As Anya patched me what I needed, my visual cortex created a burning red marker over my field of vision, one hundred and eighty-seven meters away. It wasn’t moving, just as Anya had said. It simply seemed to hang in the air, shaped like an odd letter “J.”
Advancing toward target. I had two of the dampeners in each pocket. Hopefully, the aberration was in some out of the way place so I could trigger the devices without drawing too much attention. If I was lucky, I could bolster ambient Rationality, and the thing would be ejected back to the astral tides.
Then, we could be on to find Wyatt.
I’m reading target in the airport men’s room. Can you confirm?
Affirmative, Michael.
That was somewhat out of the way at least. I reached into my jacket pocket and thumbed open the top of the dampening grenade. More cautiously than the typical airline passenger, I crept into the restroom.
There was no one inside. For the scantest moment, I thought I heard the howling of wind, but—
But no.
I checked under the stalls to be certain. It seemed clear. I flipped through the optic settings on my Crown but still saw nothing.
Wyatt will love hearing about the aberration that got caught in the john. I was teasing but only to stave off my nerves. I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck and my heart pounding in my chest.
Something was wrong.
The glowing red marker was larger now, clearly designating the third stall down.
Focus, Michael. Your adrenaline levels are—
Yes. I’m sure. I cut her off, almost testily. I’m honestly wondering if this reading is a glitch, Anya. Are you reading any residual Irrationality other than what the marker shows? Slowly, I walked toward the third stall down.
Ambient Rationality readings are nominal to .0026%. She paused, but there was just a touch of uncertainty in her cool tone. Yet the reading remains, Michael. The data seems accurate.
Understood. I placed my hand on the outside of the stall door, my thumb still on the dampener. I could set it off in an instant if I needed to.
Carefully, I pushed the door open, my heart thundering.
It was empty.
Nothing, Anya. I peered at the strange bent marker hanging in midair. It was odd. Usually, when showing an aberration, it would give an outline of the creature. This was just a curved marker somewhat taller on one side.
Whatever caused the aberration, it wasn’t physical in any way; the only way I saw anything at all was through my Crown. I peered closer, knowing that my crown was recording everything.
Ambient Rationality fluctuating, Bishop. Rationality negative point seven five.
Copy that, Anya. I stepped closer pulling the dampener from my pocket. Now that it had my full attention, I noticed that the indicator moved slowly. It almost undulated in the air.
Suddenly, it struck like an angry serpent. Quicker than thought, it flicked toward me and buried in my chest. I screamed, expecting pain and gore.
No. Nothing. I gaped at it, stunned.
Michael! Use the damp—
Then it pulled, as if hooked between my ribs, and the agony began.
&n
bsp; Michael! You—
Anya was suddenly cut short, torn from my mind, so suddenly that it was like losing a part of myself.
All I could hear was wind, the howling, screaming wind that had wailed since the beginning of time. It cried my name and whispered things best forgotten.
Cold.
I fell.
7
Stunned, I grabbed at my chest, my hands seeking where the hook had me.
Nothing. No pain, no wound.
Anya? She wasn’t there; I knew it before I opened the link. Designate? Do you have my position?
Nothing. The emptiness in my mind told me the Lattice and everything connected to that network were gone.
I blinked, looking upward into a strangely tilted night sky. The stars overhead were mad, screaming eyes that looked as if they sought to burn away the world. The ground was a sharp, angled sea of jagged obsidian. I had landed hard and broken several of the crystalline structures. My leg bled.
The wind was fierce and cold. I would freeze in it if I didn’t find shelter. At my feet was a bent, barbed hook. Still in shock, I reached for it. An otherworldly black filament stretched out behind the hook into the unseen distance.
I dropped it in horror, and logic returned.
This was a trap.
Only Assets would have noticed the wicked hook-aberration. Specifically, only a Preceptor, with her hard-wired axiomatic neuralware, could have discovered the abnormality. Something so small would never have been found with deep telemetry.
It was left there. Someone knew we would be coming. Now, they had caught me, and I had been pulled—
Where?
I pushed myself up, still wobbling and checking my chest for a wound where the hook had been. I couldn’t quite believe I was whole. Unharmed, the hook must not have been fully solid in the Rational world.
That was a blessing at least.
Anya, I’d love a response. I sent again but with little hope.
Nothing, of course. I wasn’t within range.
I looked around in a stupor at my otherworldly surroundings.
I stood on a vast plain where obsidian and other unknown minerals jutted from the ground in gleaming, razor shards. In the far-flung distance, outlined by violet stars and a bloated, angry moon, I saw several ziggurat-style pyramids amid the shadows.
I heard something skitter in the darkness and an odd clicking sound, echoing from far to my left, as if something scrambled along the stone.
But that wasn’t all I heard.
When I listened closely, the howling wind whispered names and words so foul that they made me shudder to consider them. They were angry words, words of spite and barbed flame, and they seemed to drag through my mind, cutting as they did.
No. I was imagining things. My imagination desperately scrambled to make something whole and sane out of this place, seeking any touchstone that would let me hold onto Rationality.
Rationality.
At the thought, I put my hands back into my pockets. Three of the dampener grenades were still there along with the Tabula Rasa. Only a brief casting about showed me the location of the fourth grenade, which I had apparently dropped as I came through. Just that thought gave me a small, hard smile.
Came through.
Obviously some kind of cleft or crack nearby led from this world to the airport restroom, an integral part of the snare. If the hole was still there…
I ran the spectrum of optics in my crown, just to see if I could locate the cleft, but the readings all came back twisted and wrong. Infrared showed shifting, ominous shapes around me, lost specters that drifted on the forsaken wind. The x-ray spectrum actually made my head ache; pain lanced through me as I looked into nothingness.
“Damn it,” I swore softly to myself. This wouldn’t do. Something was clouding my mind so I couldn’t see the way back.
Which led me back to the dampeners.
Unlike traditional explosive grenades, they were anchors of a sort, reinforcing and strengthening the local axioms of reality so that they matched Rationality. This was of great use when dealing with Irrats or Aberrations, as the devices made it exponentially more difficult to alter the Rational world, at least within the dampener’s range.
I furrowed my brow. If I had only thought to trigger one while in the stall, the cleft between worlds probably would have closed. It was unnatural, and the axioms of normal physics wouldn’t allow it.
But what would happened if I used one here, in a place that was so… other?
Mathematical equations could answer that very question, but I didn’t exactly have all the resources on hand to perform them. The Solomon’s Crown was a miraculous device, but without my connections to the Lattice, it became quite limited. Anya could have rattled off the numbers by rote, and Wyatt might have been able to figure them just in his head…
I was not so blessed.
Then, there was coldness, like a great looming shadow in my mind. I stumbled backward, raising my arm against something that wasn’t there.
My heart pounded in my chest. Nothing. I was alone.
But something was with me. I could feel it, scrabbling around in the back of my head, all bristled hair and gangled legs. Huge and bloated, it hid in the places where the waking mind never went, behind memory and dream, casting forth threads of terror.
“Show yourself!” I screamed into the wind, though it stole my voice. I spun wildly, looking all around me for the creature, with a dampener in one hand and the Tabula Rasa in the other.
I had no idea if they would be of help.
I turned again, still seeing nothing. Yet I felt it, as if the shape of it cast a shadow in my mind of the abomination, something between a spider and a scorpion, gifted with feral intelligence. It had scrabbling legs, each longer than my arm, a hairy carapace, and a wicked pincered tail. A visage on the edge of my imagination, it was a female with a gaping maw on her face and eight shiny eyes.
“Nothing.” I bit the word short, gritting my teeth and glaring into the gloaming darkness. “There’s nothing there.”
My heart still pounded in my chest. Now my breath was came in great, shuddering gasps. No matter what I said, I knew the truth.
She wanted more than sustenance. I could feel her desire envelop me in heat.
More than flesh, more than food. She does not want, she desires.
I almost retched at the raw force of the lustful sexuality that flooded my mind, burned in my veins. It was a physical sensation, like burning honey drizzled across my flesh.
She wants to drag me away to mate. After days of coupling in the darkness to fertilize her, then, and only then, would she sink fang into flesh to devour my eyes while I screamed in the dark, making certain I could not escape.
I must be alive when the eggs hatched inside me…
“Come on!” I pocketed the dampener for the moment and reached for one of the broken shards of obsidian. “You’ve got me here, bitch! Come take what you want!”
Nothing answered. I sensed only darkness and wind. I turned again. I knew—
There!
She skittered in the shadows on more legs than I could count. When she opened her mouth to scream, I could see that teeth lined her throat all the way down.
The horror of it struck me like a maul in the face. I scrambled backward, falling as she rushed forward, her many legs scrabbling against the unyielding stone.
I was screaming.
Her maw lunged for me. Yellow, wicked teeth sought my flesh. Her rotten breath was a miasma of despair that left only hopelessness and loss.
Blindly, wildly, I swung the obsidian shard. I couldn’t seem to touch her. She wasn’t truly solid, like some astral predator created only of nightmares and mad visions.
Yet she was real. Her deadly pincer tail arched up behind her.
That’s what she’ll tear into me with. I couldn’t say how I knew, yet I envisioned the scythe-like tip cutting the wind. After mating, she’ll tear into my stomach to lay her eggs. I won
’t die, though, not until they hatch—
She emanated fear and broken imaginings. Without words, she explained my fate exactly.
I swung the shard toward her face. This time, I felt some vague connection, but it was useless, like stabbing a butter knife into porcelain.
She lunged again, those scrabbling, twisting legs propelling her forward.
I screamed in blind panic and terror.
She has me! She has me, oh—!
I hurled myself backward, cutting my arms on more of the obsidian. The wind was frigid against my skin, scouring my flesh.
I did not notice either of these things. All I could sense were her mad eyes and the mesmerizing dance of the pincer at the end of her tail.
She gave a harsh rasp, an inhuman, chittering cry of victory. Stringy mucus drooled from her mouth, brown and thick like old grease. She reared on her back legs and then lunged at me, all horror and insectine grace.
I waited. I held out until the last possible second, the obsidian shard slicing into my trembling hand. When she was so close that her stench was practically a living thing, I pushed the button.
In my pocket, the dampening grenade pulsed to life.
I felt the world tremble around me as Rationality cascaded into this bent, dark world. The local axioms trembled as they underwent instantaneous adjustment.
The screaming wind ceased around us. The ground seemed to become softer, and the air more breathable. Gravity shifted, and the stars twinkled. The creature itself—
Light. God, there’s light! I spotted an odd, bright crevice behind the abomination. The thin, antiseptic light of the men’s washroom filtered into this world.
The creature had been hiding the rift from me using some fell power. It had dangled its lure through that crevice, so I had known an opening existed. I just hadn’t been able to see it, not with the mind-bending physics of this place. But the dampener—
I didn’t waste a breath. Even as the spider-scorpion-bitch reached for me, I rolled to the side and stood. Then, with animal panic and deep, unreasoning fear, I sprinted toward that sliver of light. The viral-mecha in my blood sang, allowing me to push just a touch harder…
I hoped it would be enough.